Conflation and how to fix itConflation and how to fix itVIa AMS, Raul Lejano looks at what in a layperson's thinking would be called conflation— confusion and blending of entirely different topics— when people think about climate change. Ideology and the Narrative of Skepticism (open access) starts with some arguably frightening false connections between the science and policy outcomes of climate change with other drivers of social anxiety among people who reject what we know about climate change. Lejano moves on to identify some possible ways forward. Among those: "Climate skeptics need to be listened to, taken seriously, and respected." Finding a way to respect people expressing racial and other brands of bigotry (as identified in the paper) as a justification for ignoring facts is a bit of a large ask. Leaving that aside, Lejano's work seems to confirm general findings of much other work, and his conclusions about improving the flow and efficacy of climate communications are thought-provoking. Many buttons need to be pushed in many minds if we're to rise to this occasion.
A distinguished group of authors led by Ljing Cheng bring us very sobering news, in Record-Setting Ocean Warmth Continued in 2019. Open access. This graph neatly captures the overall picture:
Physical science of global warming
Eurasian cooling linked with Arctic warming: Insights from PV dynamics
Observations & observational methods of global warming & effects
Record-Setting Ocean Warmth Continued in 2019 (open access)
On the imbalance and response time of glaciers in the European Alps
Sentinel?1 detects firn aquifers in the Greenland Ice Sheet
Lessons from a high CO2 world: an ocean view from ~ 3 million years ago (open access)
Modeling & simulation of global warming & global warming effects
Strong remote control of future equatorial warming by off-equatorial forcing
CMIP5 models predict rapid and deep soil warming over the 21st century
Decadal attribution of historic temperature and ocean heat content change to anthropogenic emissions
Drought Risk Assessment for Future Climate Projections in the Nakdong River Basin, Korea
Climate model advancement
How Are Emergent Constraints Quantifying Uncertainty and What Do They Leave Behind? (open access)
A Causal Flow Approach for the evaluation of Global Climate Models
Biology & global warming
Light and warming drive forest understorey community development in different environments
Climate change undermines the global functioning of marine food webs
Return of the moth: rethinking the effect of climate on insect outbreaks (open access)
The effect of climate change on the resilience of ecosystems with adaptive spatial pattern formation
GHG sources & sinks, flux
Emissions in the stream: estimating the greenhouse gas impacts of an oil and gas boom (open access)
The impact of improved satellite retrievals on estimates of biospheric carbon balance (open access)
Changes in soil greenhouse gas fluxes by land use change from primary forest
Sensitivity of mangrove soil organic matter decay to warming and sea level change
A substantial role of soil erosion in the land carbon sink and its future changes
Soil carbon loss with warming: New evidence from carbon?degrading enzymes
Climate change communications & cognition
Ideology and the Narrative of Climate Skepticism (open access)
Understanding and countering the motivated roots of climate change denial
Humans dealing with our global warming
The Blue Fix: What's driving blue growth?
Impacts of 1.5 and 2.0°C global warming on rice production across China
The overlooked spatial dimension of climate?smart agriculture
Other
A Global Drought and Flood Catalogue from 1950 to 2016 (open access)
Importance of orography for Greenland cloud and melt response to atmospheric blocking
Causes and consequences of eastern Australia’s 2019?20 season of mega?fires
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Posted by Doug Bostrom on Wednesday, 15 January, 2020
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